The start of the season is finally here! 

Our #1 Notre Dame Fighting Irish men’s lacrosse team begins its 2025 championship campaign with a pair of games indoors at Loftus. First up, on Wednesday the Cleveland State Vikings (0-1) visit South Bend for a 6:00 pm tilt, followed by the Marquette Golden Eagles (1-1) on Saturday at noon. Both games will be broadcast on ACCNX.

We’ll preview both games together.

The Opponent(s) 

To start the week the boys take on the Cleveland State Vikings. The Vikings have changed a lot since last year. The notable players remaining include Griffin Valli on defense who had 13 CTs and 46 GBs last season. Offensively they return three of their top scorers in Alex Van Voorhis (20g 20 a), Wyatt Robertson (28g 6a), and Amiri Austin (19g 12a).  Amiri is from down the street in Acworth, Georgia. 

The Vikings didn’t have much offensive production in their 4-14 season opening loss to Ohio State. Freshman Brennen Hickey scored twice to announce himself as a serious contributor. Their defense had a lot opportunity to get used to each other in a game scenario, suggesting that the Irish will see a lot of improvement and adjustment in their opponent. Goalie Justin Dalum performed admirably, again suggesting the Irish offense will have their work cut out for them.

On two-and-a-half day’s rest, the Irish will take on Marquette. The Golden Eagles have started the season 1-1 with a 14-1 loss to Michigan to open the season before recovering well with a 16-6 win over Detroit Mercy.

The main threat in the game on Saturday will once again be Bobby O’Grady. O’Grady has had 4 goals against the Irish in both the 2023 season and 2024 season. He has gotten off to a hot start again this year with 5 goals and an assist through the first 2 games. This year the Golden Eagles also have Nolan Rappis who has had a very strong start with 5 goals and 5 assists of his own and will provide a bit of a challenge when combined with O’Grady. The good news is that the Irish will not need to face All-American Mason Woodard who graduated and is now playing in the PLL.  It’s hard to guess which version of the Golden Eagles the Irish will see. There is nearly nothing in common between their two performances. But as has been the plan for a few years, if the Irish can make O’Grady do all the work on his own, the boys will like their chances. 

Our Questions 

With these first games, our main focus will be on getting a feel for the season:

  1. Continued Offensive Dominance: It is no secret that our new offense came out to a hot start in the scrimmages. During these first two games we will get to see if that continues. Kavanagh, Taylor and freshman Pokorny have been electric. They’ll look to inflict maximum pain early on their opponents.
  2. Roster Depth: In the preseason scrimmages, Coach Corrigan used lots of depth. In the second game, over 50 players saw the field. While it isn’t feasible to have that many people hit the field in a regular season game, it will be interesting to see how much of that coach decides to use. The staff has already decided to hold back Faison for a few weeks, so it will be interesting to see who occupies all the midfield roles, and how many lines they deploy.  Historically, the Irish have not gone too deep into the midfield roster early in the season, but the success of the 3-line unit last year may have the staff rethink things.
  3. Goalie Wars: Liam’s successor has not yet been named. Through the preseason, 3 have seen playing time, with Zepf, Ricciardelli, and Ohnmacht all playing well. Ricciardelli started the final scrimmage, but we have no indication who will start the season.

This first pair of games will simply be a re-introduction of an already experience team.  It will be exciting to see the new line combinations and what new wrinkles the team has added to their offensive and defensive plans. But ultimately, we just want a pair of wins on the books and for the boys to exit the weekend healthy. Anything above that is a bonus.

#GoIrish

ND-ATL 2.0